2011-10-09

Popular Messianic(?) Movements Up To The Time Of Jesus and Beyond – Part 3

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Messiahs and messianism
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Samaritan sanctuary, Mount Gerizim
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This continues from Part 2 where I continued discussing what Richard Horsley has to say about popular messianic movements in Israel up to the time of Jesus in Bandits, Prophets & Messiahs. In the last post I covered “social banditry” in Palestine (especially Galilee) and those who were looked upon as rightful kings in the early part of the first century.

What particularly interests me is the evidence that these movements represent popular messianism. Horsley is clear: there is no evidence of popular messianism before the time of Jesus. I have read many assertions that Josephus is describing messianic movements without explicitly describing them as such. But these assertions remind me of William Scott Green’s observation that many scholars have spent a lot of time studying messianism where the word is not found. The first clearest evidence we have of popular messianic hopes relates to the period after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 c.e. When we interpret movements before then as messianic are we guilty of reading later ideas back into an earlier period?

I do not deny that any of these pre-70 movements were messianic. They may have been. But what is the evidence? Are there alternative explanations that may fit the evidence (and the evidence for the origins of popular messianism) more economically?

This post addresses the Samaritan who led followers to Mount Gerazim, Theudas and “the Egyptian”. Continue reading “Popular Messianic(?) Movements Up To The Time Of Jesus and Beyond – Part 3”

2011-10-07

More reasons for an early Christian to invent the story of Jesus’ baptism

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by Neil Godfrey

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Bill Arnal and Leif E. Vaage are not the only scholars who have published doubts about the historicity of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. I mentioned them back in January this year. Another was Burton Mack in Myth of Innocence. (The evidence against historicity is in my view overwhelming. I have shown the weakness of the arguments by E. P. Sanders for its historicity and posted before on how the scenes can be explained entirely in terms of literary function and artifice without any need to resort to assumptions of extraneous events outside the text.) But for sake of completeness here is Burton Mack’s argument for treating it as entirely mythical. I highlight in bold type the reasons he sees evident for the need or wish of early Christians to invent the episode. Far from the scene being an embarrassment to the first Christians to have heard the story, it was surely welcomed. Only later evangelists reading Mark’s gospel felt embarrassment over Mark’s account because they had quite different views of Jesus.

The framework stories of the gospels are the most highly mythologized type of material. They include the narratives of Jesus’ birth, baptism, transfiguration, crucifixion, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances. The transfiguration story is purely mythological, as are the birth narratives, the story of the empty tomb, and the appearances of the resurrected Jesus to the disciples. Critical scholars would not say that any of these derive from reminiscences.

The baptism story is also mythic, but in this case may derive from lore about Jesus and John the Baptist. Lore about John and Jesus is present in the sayings tradition, in a pronouncement story, and other legends both in Q and in Mark. John the Baptist was a public figure whose social role was similar to that of Jesus and whose followers were regarded by some followers of Jesus as competitors.

Except for the baptism story, however, there is no indication that Jesus and John crossed paths.

Continue reading “More reasons for an early Christian to invent the story of Jesus’ baptism”

The Dying Messiah (refrain)

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Messiahs and messianism
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Richard Carrier has posted a fascinating artticle on the pre-Christian Jewish concept of a dying Messiah and showing the nonsense so thoughtlessly repeated even by scholars the originality of Christianity’s idea that a messiah must die in order to offer saving atonement to his people.

Richard’s post is beautifully lengthy exploring much detail from the evidence.

I can’t resist taking this opportunity to refer to the many posts I have also made on this same theme, although they do not explore the same details as Carrier does — listed below.

My posts are for most part based on other scholars who have advanced the same idea, including a Jewish one who sees certain sectarian Second Temple Jewish ideas about Isaac’s offering (apparently thought by some to have been a literal blood sacrifice that atoned for the Jewish people) overlapping with messianism in the time of the Maccabean martyrs — whose blood also had atoning power.

Other posts are based in some measure on the considerable work of Thomas L. Thompson who has written quite a bit on the concept of pre-Christian messianism.

Of significance is the death of the messianic (anointed high priest) having the power to forgive and atone; and the Davidic messiah himself was very often depicted as a figure of suffering and even ultimate rescue from death or near-death.

Carrier refers to Daniel’s messiah being killed. Saul, another messiah, was also killed. The concept of a messiah per se dying — whether the messiah was humanly fallible or a righteous martyr — was very much a part of the thought world of sectors of Judaism at the time of Christianity’s birth.

Carrier sees the history of messianic pretenders arising in the pre-war period as a possible outcome of the Daniel prophecy. Maybe, but I will have to think that through some more. Till now I have tended to argue that there were no such popular messianic expectations until from the time of the Roman war of 66-70 in a series of posts I have yet to complete. (Carriers post might end up prompting me to finish that now so I can think through his arguments some more.)

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here is a list of posts of mine on the same theme — that the idea of a dying messiah was by no means novel to the Jews or original to the Christians. Continue reading “The Dying Messiah (refrain)”

2011-10-06

Was Jesus not a teacher after all?

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by Neil Godfrey

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Teacher
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Every scholar engaged in Jesus research is by profession a teacher and so every construction of Jesus the Teacher is formulated by a teacher. These teachers, professors by trade, should wonder if there is not a bit of a Jesus-Like-Us in their constructions. (Stevan L. Davies in Jesus the Healer, 1995)

Most of the Jesus Seminar fellows think that Jesus was not an apocalyptic teacher, so they think that Jesus was a great wisdom teacher, and that helps them to actually preach Jesus, because you can go to the pulpit and say Jesus was a great teacher. (Gerd Ludemann in interview with Rachael Kohn 4th April 2004)

Most scholars, “practically all historical scholars engaged in Jesus research” (says Stevan Davies) “presuppose consciously or unconsciously that Jesus was a teacher.” Davies quotes E. P. Sanders as representative of Jesus research scholars generally and responds with what should be a most fundamental observation:

E. P. Sanders writes, for example, “I do not doubt that those who find the teaching attributed to Jesus in the synoptics to be rich, nuanced, subtle, challenging, and evocative are finding something which is really there. Further, in view of the apparent inability of early Christians to create such material, I do not doubt that the teaching of Jesus contained some or all of these attributes. In short, I do not doubt that he was a great and challenging teacher.” And so, it should follow, we know what Jesus taught. But we don’t. (p. 10, my emphasis) Continue reading “Was Jesus not a teacher after all?”

2011-10-05

“Rulers of this age” – Dale Allison’s shotgun argument for human rulers

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Religious Cultures, Biblical Studies, New Testament
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...I Used to Rule the World

I like to marshal the most complete and best arguments for and against any proposition of interest to me and when I saw Dale C. Allison’s list of arguments that “rulers of this age” in 1 Cor 2:6-8 (the rulers of this age being responsible for crucifying Jesus) means “human rulers” and not demon spirits I at first thought I had struck gold. But after working for a moment on putting them up on this post it dawned on me that what I was reading was more a scatter shotgun attack — a grab-bag of any and every point that might be used to make it appear that there were heaps of reasons to agree with the author.

The problem is that this “method” of argument avoids addressing the logic of the opposing case with a reasoned point by point rebuttal. It is quite conceivable that in a long list of dot points like this the major central points of the alternative view are bypassed completely. So rather than ditch this post I decided to continue with it. Only instead of producing what I originally expected to be a post of the best nugget of arguments against the interpretation that “rulers of this age” meaning demons, I copy a list of dot points of reasons anyone who does not like that interpretation can hang on to anyway.

And as for that “in the middle in between avoiding either end of the polarity” position that says the phrase “rulers of this age” means demons spirits working though human puppets, Allison draws on Wesley Carr to refute that Mr Jellyfish Average Have-It-Both-Ways position, too.

Dale C. Allison in Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History lists nine dot points to support the interpretation that “rulers of this age” in 1 Corinthians 2:8  is a reference to human rulers. These nine points, he says, are the “main points to be made against” the interpretation that this phrase refers to demons. That interpretation he cruelly lays aside by saying that “it has been popular” for some time now! Popular? Oh my, how savagely a scholar can damn with such faint praise!

It has been popular, over the past one hundred years or so, to identify these rulers with hostile spirits. Paul can characterize Satan as “the god of this world” (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου [2 Cor 4:4]), whom the Fourth Evangelist in turn calls “the ruler [ὁ ἄρχων] of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11); and “the rulers and authorities” (αὶ ἀρχὰς καὶ αὶ ἐξουσίας) of Col 2:5 generally are held to be demonic beings (cf. Eph 6:12). (p. 396) Continue reading ““Rulers of this age” – Dale Allison’s shotgun argument for human rulers”

2011-10-04

Scholars undermining scholars on questions fundamental to historicity of Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Ancient Literature, Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, History and Biography, New Testament
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Zeus seduces Olympias. Fresco by Giulio Romano...
Zeus seduces Olympias. Image via Wikipedia

Here is a stock criticism of the Gospel accounts of Jesus by sceptics generally and mythicists in particular:

The historical Jesus is swallowed up by myth. Look at the framework of his Gospel story: virgin birth, facing Satan in the wilderness, transfigured on the mountain, resurrected from the dead. Without these mythical motifs Jesus is pretty ordinary. 

Here is a stock response from scholars:

Ancient biographical texts similarly contain mythical elements in their framework: the influence of the gods is shown in signs, dreams, etc. Such a mythical framework does not justify our disputing in principle the historicity of the traditions handed down within this framework. (p. 114, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide, by Theissen and Merz)

More, the scholars who framed that response to the sceptic added two examples from ancient biographies to illustrate and support their claim that the Gospels are no different from other ancient biographies of historical persons: both alike are said to include mythical embellishments to their narratives.

But take a closer look at that claim. I will quote the scholar’s account of these ancient biographies that supposedly supports their claim that they are similar in this respect to the Gospels (Scholarly claim 1). I will then quote translations of the actual biographies themselves so we can see how faithful that scholarly comparison was (Plutarch and Suetonius in their own words).

After that I quote another renowned biblical scholar himself observant (or secure) enough to face up to the discrepancy between what his peers say about the evidence and what the evidence itself indicates (Scholarly claim 2).

One will forgive me if I sometimes let slip with occasional slivers of cynicism in relation to biblical scholars who present themselves as honest public intellectuals while at the same time resorting to tendentious claims about the evidence for their scholarly arguments. I conclude with another rant about the failings of too many historical Jesus scholars as truly responsible public intellectuals. Continue reading “Scholars undermining scholars on questions fundamental to historicity of Jesus”

Carrier’s Real Origins of Christianity Course

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Early Christianities, New Testament
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Tim alerted me to an interesting course advertised on Richard Carrier’s blog:

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2011/09/december-course.html

Course description: This course examines the historical origins of the Christian religion from a secular and skeptical perspective. . . . .

2011-10-03

Explaining the noble lies (or pious fiction) in the Gospels

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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Walk on the water
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Mainstream scholars struggle trying to explain why the Gospel authors included clearly symbolic — nonhistorical — tales about Jesus in their gospel narratives.

Marcus J. Borg, Mark Allan Powell, Dale C. Allison, Roger David Aus, John Dominic Crossan, John Shelby Spong and Robert Gundry are some of the scholars who acknowledge tales such as the virgin birth, Jesus walking on water, the transfiguration, the miracles of the loaves, the resurrection appearances are fabrications, metaphors.

(So much for that argument that there were enough surviving eyewitnesses or people who knew eyewitnesses to keep the evangelists honest!)

Marcus J. Borg writes of stories like Jesus and Peter walking on water, the turning the water into wine at the Cana wedding, and the virgin birth:

Purely metaphorical narratives . . . are not based on the memory of particular events, but are symbolic narratives created for their metaphorical meaning. As such, they are not meant as historical reports. (p.  57, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary) Continue reading “Explaining the noble lies (or pious fiction) in the Gospels”

2011-10-02

That Mysterious Young Man in the Gospel of Mark: Fleeing Naked and Sitting in the Tomb

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by Neil Godfrey

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Baptism of Christ. Fresco in Cappadocia
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An old (1973) article in the Journal of Biblical Literature by Robin Scroggs and Kent I. Groff make a case that the young man who fled naked from the scene of Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemane and the young man (reappearing?) in the tomb to announce Jesus’ resurrection were originally created as symbols of the baptism ritual for new converts to Christianity.

The young man having his linen cloak (σινδόν / sindon) snatched from him is substituted by Jesus who is entering into his “baptism” of suffering, death and burial — as depicted by Jesus himself being wrapped in a σινδόν/sindon for burial. The young man then reappears in the tomb, sitting on the right side, clothed in white like Jesus at the transfiguration. These narrative scenes find their meaning in the baptism ritual of early Christians: the initiate first removed his garment and entered the baptism naked and was then given a new robe to symbolize a new life in the resurrected Christ. Continue reading “That Mysterious Young Man in the Gospel of Mark: Fleeing Naked and Sitting in the Tomb”

2011-09-29

Keeping (Biblical) Scholars Honest

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies
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In a recent post I drew attention to Mark Goodacre’s remark that the work of the mythicists helps keeps “scholars like him honest”. It is always good, he said, to go back and see how we really do know that Jesus existed. But is that what they are doing? Why are New Testament scholars failing to cope with the new potentials and challenges of the internet in the same way that scholars from certain other disciplines are?

One of the best things that has happened to challenge scholars in recent years is the internet and the internet’s potential to democratize knowledge as well as challenges to established conventional wisdoms.

One still sees a few scholars complaining about the internet’s ability to pollute, dilute, dispute, disrepute, confute and prostitute all that is holy and good in their field of research.

Some woolly mammoths are even still caught out poo-poohing Wikipedia on principle simply because it started out as a democratically created encyclopedia. Even when they do mention it favourably they betray their guilt by adding some scoffing remark like a mantra. (See http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html and related links for comparison of Wikipedia with Encyclopedia Britannica)

I have not done a study of who the main culprits of all this esoteric anti-democratic fear-mongering are, but I do wonder if most of them belong to the non-science fields. Continue reading “Keeping (Biblical) Scholars Honest”

2011-09-28

Lights turning on in the U.S. again?

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by Neil Godfrey

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It’s great to read good news from the U.S.A. again. All the inspiring stuff has been coming out of south-east Asia, the Middle East, north Africa, Latin America, southern Europe. And now in the wake of the Occupy Wall Street and its sister movements I read of Elizabeth Warren, a voice of reason amid the madness, saying the obvious in a way that it needs to be communicated. Australia’s richest man, now dead, boasted that the one dollar he paid as tax was quite justified because it was he who was the one giving everyone else their jobs and incomes! Few at the time were able to reach the public media with the obvious retort that that blind arrogance deserved and that Elizabeth Warren is now saying according to the linked Al Jazeera opinion piece:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear:

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

I read one sarcastic piece about the Wall Street demonstrators but many conservative-minded people fail to understand what even small protest actions can often do. They don’t bring the targets they are opposing down to their knees. But they do often spark the publicity, the attention, and initiate the public-discussion and awareness that does eventually mount the pressure to effect the change.

It’s great to see activism and clearly understood outspokenness in the U.S. once again. The U.S. has been under a very dark shadow for too many years now and all the wonderful lights have been burning elsewhere all this time. I find it very encouraging to see some flickering sparks once again from a region that has had very little good news for so long now.

2011-09-27

Mark Goodacre on Jesus mythicism

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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I have finally caught up with Mark Goodacre’s podcast “Did Jesus Exist?”

For the benefit of others who don’t always find the time or opportunity to listen to a podcast and whose interests may overlap with some of mine here are some of the points he makes.

He asks of a mythicist (Timothy Freke):

Was it just Jesus as a first century figure that he was sceptical about or was he sceptical about other figures that are mentioned by the sources of the first century, by people like Josephus and so on? Is he sceptical about the existence of Herod or Caiaphas or Pilate or some of these characters.

In a follow up comment to the podcast Mark Goodacre made explicit the intent of his question:

When I put the question to Tim Freke, I was more interested in finding out if he was also sceptical about the existence of other first century figures from that region than anything else. In other words, I was trying to get to the root of the hyper-scepticism. Is it a general scepticism about ancient history and the limits of our knowledge, or is it something else?

Goodacre’s question assumes that the evidence for Jesus is comparable to what we find for other figures in ancient history generally. (I have argued that if this were the case there would be no debate about the existence of Jesus at all.) It also infers that there is something wrong with the one asking the question, but I return to this at the end of the post. Continue reading “Mark Goodacre on Jesus mythicism”

2011-09-26

Essential Guide to the Historical Jesus: Introduction (James H. Charlesworth)

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by Neil Godfrey

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“This book is an essential guide to the life and thought of Jesus . . . “

That’s James H. Charlesworth’s opening line in the preface to The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide, one title in Abingdon Press’s Essential Guide series.

James H. Charlesworth is George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature and Editor and Director of the Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project, an internationally recognized expert in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old and New Testaments, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Josephus, Jesus Research, and the Gospel of John.

In the twenties of the first century C.E., this man walked out of the hills of Nazareth and into world culture. (p. xiii)

Scholars say Jesus avoided large and cosmopolitan cities (until the last week of his life) so I look forward to learning what Charlesworth means by Jesus stepping out into “world culture”. At the same time Charlesworth describes Jesus as one who happened to “stand out as one of the most Jewish Jews of the first century”.

Jesus was driven by one desire: to obey God at all times and in all ways. For him, not a word of Torah may be ignored or compromised.

I’m not quite sure how one “stands out” for being “most Jewish” among other Jews. But the message Charlesworth wants to convey is clear.

More accurate historical knowledge

Charlesworth explains that today it is possible to “more accurately retell the story of Jesus” than it was 2000 years ago. Continue reading “Essential Guide to the Historical Jesus: Introduction (James H. Charlesworth)”

2011-09-25

Is it a “fact of history” that Jesus existed? Or is it only “public knowledge”?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Historical Methods and Historiography
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I have sometimes discussed how we know what happened in the past or who existed as historical persons. Most of what I have said is my own reflection and inference from what I understand of how “history works” beginning with my own studies in university history majors. Part of our required reading was What Is History? by E. H. Carr and it was this book that introduced me to the question of “what is a historical fact”, and very soon other works on the same questions, some of them responding to Carr, were added to my reading list.

But the question of “historical fact” was rarely addressed at the level at which it is addressed when asking “Did Jesus exist as a historical person?”

What is often addressed in works on historiography is the nature and reliability of sources used by historians and the need for testing these for bias, genuineness, etc.

But I don’t think I ever read a discussion by historians that raised the question about how we know anyone (say, Julius Caesar) existed in ancient times. Many histories will explain how we know anything at all about the person and events they cover and will cite the various primary and secondary sources used.

But I don’t think there are very many history classes in the world that systematically train students how to know if Caesar or Churchill actually existed.

The closest would be classes that teach students to know how to evaluate sources used for a study of such persons.

What I think generally happens when the question of the historicity of Jesus is raised is a blurring of different ways of knowing about things in history, or simply a failure to stop and think through how we do know what we know.

There are different types of knowledge and it helps to distinguish them when we are addressing a question like whether a particular person existed in history.

Public Knowledge

There is first of all “public knowledge”. We know stuff because it’s what we are taught very early and what everyone knows. Continue reading “Is it a “fact of history” that Jesus existed? Or is it only “public knowledge”?”